R.
Buckminster Fuller
(1895-1983) was a
self-described
"comprehensivist" who took
a long view of history and
applied his abilities for
the general good of
humanity in whatever way
was most relevant at the
moment. He played the
roles of poet, designer,
architect, philosopher,
inventor, and teacher, but
he never categorized
himself as any one of
these things. He was above
all an optimist, believing
that technological
advances would make
resource scarcity a thing
of the past, thus making
systems born of an "us or
them" mentality obsolete.
Cooperation, not
competition, would signify
the next step of human
evolution. To this end, he
urged leaders of
government and industry to
focus not on weaponry, but
on what he called
"livingry"--the tools
necessary to promote peace
and prosperity for the
entire planet's
population. It was he who
coined the term "Spaceship
Earth" and introduced the
concept of "One World
Town," which inspired
Marshall McLuhan's
oft-quoted "Global
Village."

Early
experiences as a U.S.
naval officer in WWI
(which he later referred
to as the first global
civil war) and as
president of an innovative
construction company
showed him that
bureaucracies exist to
preserve their own power
and influence and thus
often hinder the
individual from fulfilling
his or her vision. At the
age of 32, he dropped out
of society for a 2-year
period of self-imposed
silence, study, and
meditation, after which he
resolved not only to never
again work for anyone
else, but also to never
let monetary
considerations influence
his choice of what to work
on next. He deduced that
if he worked for the good
of humanity and Universe,
all his needs would be
provided for. "Leap and
the net will appear." Time
proved him correct.

His first significant
invention was the Dymaxion
Map, which for the
first time presented a
2-dimensional view of
Earth which did not
distort the proportions of
surface features. Also,
rather than showing the
typical sidelong
equatorial view of land
masses seemingly divided
by bodies of water, he
adopted a top-down view
which showed the basic
interconnectedness of all
Earth's land, thus taking
a vital early step in
promoting a unified
worldview. The Dymaxion
Map's modular
construction (similar to a
tangram set) allowed the
focal point to be shifted
to any perspective. For
example, putting the South
Pole at its center shows
unmistakably One World
Ocean, not the outdated
divisions which have
persisted since the Age of
"Discovery" 500 years
past.

Fuller is perhaps best
known for his invention of
the geodesic dome, which
is basically a hollow
sphere constructed of
triangular components, far
stronger than any
structure based on the
right angle geometry which
dominated architecture
unquestioned for hundreds
of years. The perfect
simplicity of his design
was later confirmed by
virologists when they
discovered that the hard
shells of viruses are
built the same way.

Again, this confirmed
Bucky's notion that all
ideas are in Nature,
whether or not we
consciously perceive them.
He believed in ESP and
intuition, convinced that
our senses are
underutilized (some as yet
unknown) and constantly
evolving. To Fuller, the
only obstacle to progress
was entrenched thought,
the reflexive conditioning
of institutions which
create barriers to
critical thinking and are
skeptical of inspiration.

Fuller's epitaph reads
simply: TRIM TAB. A trim
tab is the tiny, trailing
part of a ship's rudder.
Slight pressure on the
trim tab moves the rudder,
which in turn directs the
ship. In a recent
editorial, Rolling Stone
editor Jann Wenner
suggests that the events
of 9/11 will be seen as
the "pivot of history." We
are all trim tabs, tiny
pivots affecting the
overall direction of
humanity. As Fuller
advised, it is time to
take a long view. Zoom
out, look at where we've
been and where we might be
going. See it? Now choose
your path and act
accordingly.

The speed
of the "Twentieth Century
Limited"
roaring by an observer at
its trackside
may be reduced to a
snail-like crawl
not by the observer's
throwing a stop signal
ahead,
which causes the engineer to
throttle down,
but simply
through the seemingly
irrelevant act
on the part of our observer
of zooming aloft
in a pursuit plane.

From this aeronautic
viewpoint
as the horizon increases,
the relative speed of the
train
through the observer's world
is diminished.

Thus do aviators regain
daylight
after the sun has set.

So in super perspective to
us
do the stars,
moving at thousands of times
the speed of the "Twentieth
Century"
seemingly hang motionless in
the night sky.

From, let us say, a
fifty-thousand foot sky
vantage,
do events in the making,
unpredictable
from man's usual earth level
viewpoint,
become readily predictable
--
the flood lands ahead
which the train approaches.

But even as we after sunset
regain the sun
by flying aloft,
so may we regain observation
of events
seemingly
long past to the man in the
street; --
at least, gain accurate
record
of the outstanding causes
and effects
of those events --
of a many-mile wake in the
water
soon to resolve.

Thus may we well comprehend
that since the important
causes and effects
never were visible
in historical scale
to the man at earth level,
his recording of history
was of necessity
naive, -- legendary, --
and full of fanciful
misemphasis
on back-eddy flotsam edging
the main streams.

But our sky-vantage
reviewing
is summarily accompanied by
a sense
not only of slow motion
of the events enacted,
but also of relative
belittlement
in trend significance
of any precise time of
impact,
or any direct agency act, --
in the consecutive push-over
flows, --
to the greater import
of the over-all happenings
themselves;
and to the clearly tracked
passages
of past and hitherward
trends
of over-lapping causes and
results
which interplay to the
horizon....